It's not just the lack of presence and spending on international talent. Jerry doesn't let Kenny spend on the draft. The Sox routinely stick to slot recommendations and thus end up completely avoiding a huge portion of talent in the draft. Go look at total draft, and bonus expenditure spending. The Sox have been in the bottom routinely for some years now. Couple all this with a dearth of effective scouts, an inability to churn out major leaguers from what talent they do end up drafting, and Kenny's propensity to trade prospects to "win now!" and you have the current situation the Sox are in. The CBA changes to the draft with effectively instituting hard slotting without calling it hard slotting should rectify some of these issues.

Who was the last player to come up through the Sox system to become a decent MLB starting player for the Sox? Nevermind any all-stars, how about even just a passable MLB starting player?

I'm having a hard time thinking of anyone in the last 10 years. This last 10 years has brought us the likes of Brian Anderson and Josh Fields. Beckham was supposed to be our one homegrown success thanks to our #8 overall pick in 2008, but he's looking more and more like another bust.

Chris Sale looks promising. We'll see what Brent Morel does after his rookie season. Also, it sounds like Addison Reed might be someone to look forward to.

KW has had success in picking up talent from other farms systems via trades (Danks, Floyd, Quentin) but we're several years removed from those successes. That's probably the closest we've come in the last 10 years to developing our own talent.

Aside from the new CBA helping the Sox, is there anything that we can hope current Sox ownership will do improve this organization's lack of talent? I seem to recall that they supposedly had a "shakeup" around 2008 (when they brought in Buddy Bell). It's 3 or 4 years later and things still look pretty bad.

It's not very likely to build a consistently winning organization without having a good farm system as part of the mix.